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DA Carol Chambers a study in contrasts

By Kevin Vaughan The Denver Post

Posted:
05/30/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

Updated:
05/30/2010 06:16:35 PM MDT

Chambers, left, and her attorney, Michael McConnell, leave a Denver courtroom in 2006. Chambers appeared before a disciplinary panel on allegations she threatened a lawyer for a collection agency. She was censured for using her office to help an acquaintance.
(Ed Andrieski, Associated Press file photo
)

Carol Chambers is the lock- 'em-up prosecutor who uses the state's habitual-offender statute, which can quadruple the typical sentence, as a matter of routine — accounting for 46 percent of the Colorado cases in which it's been filed in the past four years.

And she's the prosecutor who put her name behind the state's first "mental health" court, which so far has sent six people to treatment instead of prison.

As district attorney for Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties, she is Colorado's hanging prosecutor, having sought the death penalty against six defendants in four cases during a time in which only one other capital case has been filed in the state.

And she's the prosecutor married to a lawyer who defends people facing the death penalty.

She is the prosecutor who isn't afraid to take on cops — winning a court battle giving her the right to tell defense attorneys about one officer's credibility.

And she's the prosecutor who is again taking that officer's cases after concluding he changed.

She is the prosecutor whose juvenile diversion program draws raves from a district attorney on the other side of the political aisle — a program that incorporates activities such as art therapy into treatment aimed at keeping teenagers who get into trouble from repeating those mistakes. A pottery wheel soon will be spinning in the office's art room.

Prosecutor Carol Chambers is a study in contrasts.

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The Republican has faced her share of controversies, many sparked by her policies and fueled by her comments. Her quarrels with judges over their work habits and with police officers over their ethics, and her tangles with county commissioners and former employees, have sparked one news story after another. A defense attorney assails her as bloodthirsty, and a former colleague accuses her of abusing the habitual-offender statute.

District Attorney Carol Chambers, left, and her attorney Michael McConnell leave a courtroom in Denver, Monday, Oct. 23, 2006, where Chambers is the respondent before a disciplinary panel where she is accused of using her position to intimidate a lawyer. (Ed Andrieski, The Associated Press)

"I think she's more interested in serving political ends than in the ends of justice," said David Lane, a defense lawyer who has battled Chambers on death-penalty cases.

She's been accused of being rigid, of overstepping the discretion granted to prosecutors, of even, in one case, subverting state law in the way she billed the Department of Corrections to pay for prosecution of death-penalty cases stemming from a prison killing.

But Chambers hasn't backed down — she does things her way and doesn't worry much whether anyone objects.

"I am not motivated by getting people to like me," she said simply during an interview at her Centennial office.

Even so, some people do like her — or, more particularly, the things she's doing.

"That's terrific stuff," said Stan Garnett, Boulder County district attorney and the Democratic Party's candidate for Colorado attorney general, of her juvenile diversion program.

"I think she represents her district well," said Republican Jim Dyer, an Arapahoe County commissioner. "She's not afraid to tackle the tough questions. She certainly is not afraid to take the courts on themselves when she feels there is some issue that needs to be addressed. She is a very strong advocate for what she believes in."

Chambers, 54, sees the criticism as a badge of honor — proof that she's challenging the status quo.

"I know over the years I've stepped on powerful toes," she said. "I think that's part of reform. And if you step on powerful toes, you're going to be attacked. That's how you know you're a reformer."

Carol Chambers appears at a 2007 news conference after grand jurors indicted a man in the disappearance of his daughter. Chambers is tough on repeat criminals while offering innovative ways to help others stay out of trouble.
(Hyoung Chang, Denver Post file photo
)

Hospital duty shapes legal work

The law was not the first career for Chambers, an Ohio native and the daughter of a Presbyterian minister.

After earning a nursing degree, she came to Colorado in the late 1970s, working in area hospitals. At University of Colorado Hospital, she grew frustrated at the inability of nurses to call attention to problems in patient care. They staged a sick-out, and the experience, she said, "persuaded me that I wanted to have more control over what might happen in the future."

She enrolled at the University of Denver, putting herself through law school while working as a nurse, graduating at 29.

Her experience in the emergency room shaped her views on victims and perpetrators, crime and punishment.

She carries the anguished images of families told that a loved one had been murdered. She carries the memories of a woman attacked on a highway off-ramp by a knife-wielding rapist, and the vision of a drunken-driving crash that killed a pregnant mother and disfigured her friend.

Knowing that many victims are fine one minute and devastated the next haunts her.

But before she could carry that concern for the rights of victims to a prosecutor's office, she made a couple of stops, clerking for an appeals court judge and spending time as medical malpractice defense attorney. In 1990, she became a prosecutor with the idea that she would spend a few years gathering trial experience, then return to private practice. In the end, however, she never left the district attorney's office.

In 2004, she ran for the Republican nomination against another prosecutor in the office, Eva Wilson, who was backed by various law enforcement agencies and endorsed by newspapers.

Chambers, the decided underdog, shocked Wilson in the primary election, which was tantamount to winning the job in the heavily Republican district. She called that win "an issue of faith" and followed it up with a relatively easy victory in the general election. She was re-elected in 2008.

"It's not like I felt like God called me to win — he called me to run," she said, recounting a conversation she had with Gov. Bill Ritter, a former Denver district attorney. "And I did and left the results to be what they might be, but I certainly thought it was a possibility."

The fireworks erupted almost immediately.

She suggested that some members of the office get their resumes ready — not an unusual move, except that she said it publicly — and after taking office, she clashed with the commissioners in the four counties she represents when they refused to grant her the same $147,357 salary as her predecessor. She questioned whether judges were putting in the necessary time on the bench.

She tangled with an Aurora police officer she once prosecuted for witness tampering, ultimately winning a judge's ruling that she was within her rights to notify defense attorneys of the cop's reputation.

Over time, however, she softened after concluding the officer had changed.

"I think people, for the most part, deserve a second chance," she said.

Strong reactions to her decisions

There is no doubt Chambers engenders strong emotions in the legal community.

A number of people who have worked with or for her, including some whose employment in her office ended after she was elected in 2004, declined to talk about her, as did attorneys who have to face her staff prosecutors in court. Others aired their grievances.

Lane, the high-profile Denver defense lawyer and one of the state's most vocal death-penalty opponents, called her "a nightmare for justice and civil rights."

Indeed, her use of the death penalty galvanizes her critics.

Since taking office, she has sought the death penalty for five suspects — two men accused of killing a witness in a murder case; two inmates in a state prison accused of killing another prisoner; and a man accused of dragging a woman to death behind his pickup. And she fought to impose capital punishment in a sixth case that preceded her term in office — trying to win a second death verdict after the first one was overturned.

"She will seek the death penalty on cases that no prosecutor anywhere will seek the death penalty on," Lane said of the prison cases.

For Chambers, it's about taking crime seriously.

She pointed to a case in which a young man behind bars in a forgery case was murdered.

"If they kill another inmate, they think the response is going to be, you know, 'so what?' And it cannot be, 'so what?' " she says.

However, it isn't just seeking the death penalty that has landed Chambers in the news.

In 2008, District Judge Stanley Brinkley threw her office off one of the cases after concluding, among other things, that two of her prosecutors were compromised because one had previously represented the suspect and another a witness in the case. The Colorado Supreme Court overturned Brinkley's decision.

Then, earlier this year, Brinkley issued a new ruling, concluding that Chambers had circumvented state law in the way she'd used money paid by the Department of Corrections. State law allows prosecutors to bill the prison system when they try cases arising from violence that occurs behind bars. According to Department of Corrections records, Chambers' office has asked the state for $492,259.53 — and a huge chunk of it has been paid.

However, Brinkley ruled that the money Chambers received should have been returned to the four counties she represents, not used to hire staff, as she did. Chambers headed back to court.

"Frankly," she said, "we anticipate him being reversed again."

The briefs have just been filed.

The bottom line, she said, is that voters in Colorado have approved the death penalty.

"It is something that should be very carefully used from a prosecutor's point of view," she said. "You should be very sure you have the right person. And I think the people in the state want it, and want it to be used very, very carefully."

One of those who disagrees with her stance is her husband, Nathan, who once represented Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

"There's some things we don't discuss any more," she said. The reason is simple: "It becomes so heated."

Throwing book at repeat criminals

In Colorado, it's unofficially known as "the bitch" — the state's version of three strikes and you're out. Officially, it's the habitual-offender statute, and it allows prosecutors to seek sentences three or four times the norm in cases where a suspect has three felony convictions.

In 2005, Chambers' first year in office, her prosecutors filed 34 habitual-offender cases.

Since then, however, she's gone on a tear: According to the State Court Administrator's Office, Chambers' office has accounted for 1,455 of the 3,157 habitual-offender filings in the past four years. That's an average of 363 a year.

In Chambers' eyes, it's a matter of taking advantage of a tool to deal with chronic criminals and improve public safety. She has seen people, she said, with as many as 14 felony convictions facing a new charge.

"At some point a victim has a right to say, 'Ah, wait a minute, why was I victim No. 14?' " she asked. " 'Why wasn't this person in jail?' "

Her office has filed the charge in numerous cases in which low-level felons have walked away from community corrections centers.

"You know, there's a certain aspect to filing habitual-offender counts that sends a very strong message to the offender: You've come into a new category; you can either address the issues that are making you commit felony after felony, or you can look at what you might be facing," she said.

One critic of her use of the law is Richard Bloch, a former colleague with whom she tried her first murder case.

"I think that their use of the habitual criminal statute has been perverted and has been very, very overused," he said.

One scenario, he said, is typical. Someone with low-level felony convictions — such as theft — walks away from a community corrections center and faces a charge of escape. Before Chambers took office, he said, it was typical for someone who did that to wind up in jail for a year. Now, in some cases, those people end up going to prison for a decade or more.

"I just do not understand the societal benefit of the decision," he said.

DA's discretion second-guessed

Chambers is headstrong in cases that have left some defense attorneys scratching their heads.

She refused, for example, to press rape charges in a case in which a young woman alleged she was sexually assaulted after a high school graduation party — despite the existence of DNA evidence. The case was convoluted, to be sure: The woman initially did not want to press charges, then changed her mind several years later.

A judge ordered Chambers to appoint a special prosecutor. She appealed, and won.

"We did not think there was sufficient evidence," she said.

She continues to pursue charges against a hearing-impaired, developmentally disabled man accused of breaking into an 8-year-old's bedroom and groping her — despite a DNA test that found genetic material from an unknown male, not the suspect, on the girl's underwear.

Chambers said she continues to evaluate the case, which she acknowledges concerns her. In the end, she said, her office's ethical burden will determine what she does.

"If we don't think we can prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, we cannot proceed," she said.

That the case already hasn't been dismissed bewilders Iris Eytan, the man's attorney.

"I believe he should have been exonerated at the point when the DNA results came back," she said.

And then there's the case of a mentally ill young man who faces an assault charge after he sprinted out of a hospital room and crashed into a doctor, breaking his leg. The man's family argues that he needs mental- health help, not jail.

"The family may be right," Chambers said. "We are looking at that issue very closely."

Helping people turn lives around

But for all the death penalty and habitual-offender cases, Chambers also has an extensive series of programs aimed at preventing crime and at intervening with juveniles who've broken the law in an effort to set them on a new path.

Some of it is standard stuff.

Mason Finks, a former Methodist minister, runs her consumer protection division, conducting 125 seminars a year and sending out alerts to more than 600 organizations on everything from shady roofers to the latest Internet scams.

But some of her work is as progressive as you'd find anywhere in the state.

Originally conceived as a kind of juvenile probation, her office's diversion program has been led by Chambers in surprising new directions.

"We have a one-size-fits-no-one belief," said Sheeley Dodd, the program's director. "Diversion looks different for each kid."

So it is that there's an art room, complete with a corner where the walls have been covered in the kind of plastic you'd find in a shower, lest it be easier to clean up the clay expected to be flying off the soon-to-be-installed pottery wheel. It's there that kids in trouble can be introduced to art therapy.

It's also a program that aims to go beyond a teenager's crime to look at the factors that contributed to it. The office has arranged for family counseling. It has set out to find someone to donate braces, or acne treatment, to help a kid in trouble be more ready to face life.

There's even a therapy dog that's regularly involved in the work with juvenile offenders.

All of it, Chambers said, falls into her philosophy: Tough on crime on one end of the system; progressive about finding treatment and rehabilitation in hopes of preventing future criminal behavior on the other.

"We can rehabilitate kids," Chambers said. "We can make a difference."

According to Dodd, 85 percent of the kids who enter the program complete it, and a year later less than 4 percent have committed another crime.

Then there's the state's first true mental- health court, running in the district with plenty of support from Chambers.

In its first few months, the court adjudicated six cases involving people with a so-called Axis 1 diagnosis, such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, sending each of them into treatment for the underlying issue instead of into a prison cell.

"We're trying to address the cause," said Chief Judge William Blair Sylvester. "If we can get a handle on the root issues, they've got a chance to be productive."

Priorities reflect community views

In the end, Chambers sees the criticism as a reflection of the politics in the district she represents.

"It's part of being a prosecutor in a conservative jurisdiction," she said, "I think where we are, perhaps, a bit tougher on crime than other jurisdictions are."

Garnett, the Boulder Democrat, has known Chambers for more than 20 years and says she is likely in tune with those who elected her.

"As far as I can tell, Carol does a pretty good job of reflecting her community's views of what they want to see out of the criminal justice system," he said.

She leaves office in January 2013, a victim of one of the things she supports — term limits. Although she believes it would be better to give district attorneys 12 years on the job instead of eight, she's content to move on.

"I do think it's good to encourage people to do things, to move on, and to take on a fresh challenge and revitalize by doing something different," she said. "And by the same token, I think it's important to bring new ideas and fresh energy into government."

And after January 2013?

She professes no specific plans or any burning political ambitions. But she admits to sometimes thinking about doing something totally different.

"OK, if I had my druthers, I'd take a couple years and be a foster parent," she said.

Family: Married to Nathan Chambers, an attorney, since 1987; one daughter, 13

Office: District attorney for the 18th Judicial District, which includes Arapahoe, Douglas, Lincoln and Elbert counties

Employees: 190 | Budget: $17 million

Something you might not know: In 2004, Chambers was diagnosed with breast cancer — she underwent a mammogram a few weeks after her older sister was stricken with the disease. Six years later, both are cancer-free.

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